JERUSALEM (BN24) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday Israel would determine which foreign forces it would allow as part of a planned international force in Gaza to help secure a fragile ceasefire under U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan, explicitly ruling out Turkish armed forces.
It remains unclear whether Arab and other states will be ready to commit troops, in part given the refusal of Palestinian Hamas militants to disarm as called for by the plan, while Israel has voiced concerns about the makeup of the force.
While the Trump administration has ruled out sending U.S. soldiers into the Gaza Strip, it has been speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan to contribute to the multinational force.
“We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said. “This is, of course, acceptable to the United States as well, as its most senior representatives have expressed in recent days,” he told a session of his cabinet.
Israel, which besieged Gaza for two years to back up its air and ground war in the enclave against Hamas after the Palestinian militant group’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, continues to control all access to the territory.
Last week Netanyahu hinted that he would be opposed to any role for Turkish security forces in Gaza. Once-warm Turkish-Israeli relations soured drastically during the Gaza war, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan lambasting Israel’s devastating air and ground campaign in the small Palestinian enclave.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Monday that Israel will not accept the presence of Turkish armed forces in Gaza under the U.S. plan to end war in the Palestinian territory. “Countries that want or are ready to send armed forces should be at least fair to Israel,” Saar said at a news conference in Budapest.
“Turkey, led by Erdogan, led a hostile approach against Israel,” Saar said, speaking alongside his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto. “So it is not reasonable for us to let their armed forces enter the Gaza Strip and we will not agree to that and we said it to our American friends.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a visit to Israel aimed at shoring up the truce, said Friday the international force would have to be made up of “countries that Israel’s comfortable with.” He made no comment on Turkish involvement.
Rubio added that Gaza’s future governance still needed to be worked out among Israel and partner nations but could not include Hamas. Rubio later said U.S. officials were receiving input on a possible U.N. resolution or international agreement to authorize the multinational force in Gaza and would discuss the issue in Qatar, a key Gulf mediator on Gaza, on Sunday.
A major challenge to Trump’s plan is that Hamas has balked at disarming. Since the ceasefire took hold two weeks ago as the first stage of Trump’s twenty-point plan, Hamas has waged a violent crackdown on clans that have tested its grip on power.
At the same time, the remains of thirteen deceased hostages remain in Gaza with Hamas citing obstacles to locating them in the pervasive rubble left by the fighting.
An Israeli government spokesperson said Sunday Hamas, which released the remaining twenty living hostages it took in its October 2023 assault, knew where the bodies were. “Israel is aware that Hamas knows where our deceased hostages are, in fact, located. If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to retrieve the remains of our hostages,” the spokesperson said.
Israel had, however, allowed the entry of an Egyptian technical team to work with the Red Cross to locate the bodies. The spokesperson said the team would use excavator machines and trucks for the search beyond the so-called yellow line in Gaza behind which Israeli troops have initially pulled back under Trump’s plan.
Netanyahu began the cabinet session by stressing Israel was an independent country, rejecting the notion that “the American administration controls me and dictates Israel’s security policy.” Israel and the United States, he said, are a “partnership.”
Diplomats and analysts say Trump managed to push Netanyahu, who had long rejected global pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza, to accept his framework for a broader peace deal and also forced Netanyahu to call Qatar’s leader to apologize after a failed bombing raid targeting Hamas negotiators in that country.
Trump also persuaded Arab states to convince Hamas to return all the Israeli hostages, its key leverage in the war.
The formation of an international peacekeeping force for Gaza represents one of the most complex aspects of Trump’s ceasefire plan. The force would need to satisfy Israeli security concerns while also being acceptable to Palestinian factions and regional Arab states.
Turkey’s exclusion from consideration reflects the dramatic deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations during the Gaza conflict. Erdogan has been one of Israel’s harshest critics, repeatedly condemning Israeli military operations and comparing Israeli actions to historical atrocities.
The international force concept aims to provide security in Gaza while allowing humanitarian reconstruction to proceed. However, fundamental questions remain about the force’s mandate, rules of engagement and relationship to both Israeli security forces and Palestinian authority structures.
Hamas’ refusal to disarm represents a fundamental obstacle to implementation of the peacekeeping plan. The militant group has maintained its grip on Gaza despite two years of Israeli military operations and shows no indication of surrendering weapons or control.
The ceasefire that began two weeks ago represents the first sustained pause in fighting since the war began following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack that killed around twelve hundred people in Israel and saw two hundred fifty-one taken hostage.
More than sixty-seven thousand Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, according to Gaza health officials. The territory has been devastated, with vast areas reduced to rubble and most of the population displaced.
The recovery of deceased hostage remains has become a contentious issue. Israel insists Hamas knows the locations of bodies and could retrieve them with sufficient effort, while Hamas claims the extensive destruction makes location and recovery extremely difficult.
The deployment of an Egyptian technical team with heavy equipment to search for remains represents a practical step forward, though progress has been slow. The team’s work beyond Israeli-controlled zones demonstrates the complex logistics of implementing even basic aspects of the ceasefire agreement.
Netanyahu’s assertion of Israeli independence in decision-making reflects tensions with the Trump administration over implementation details. While Trump successfully pressured Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire framework, Israel retains effective veto power over force composition given its control of Gaza access.
